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Mac….. Mommy?!?!

Mac Daddy, North Beach’s oldest and most experienced Herring Gull, showed up on the beach today looking particularly crappy. Rough night Mac Daddy? But he carried on with his business, being “King of the Wurld” as he normally does…

Checkin’ out yer foodz…Walkin’ on yer towelzRippin’ up yer beerzBut wait, what? Mac Daddy had something I’ve never seen him have before.A kid. And this kid was so green, he was even trying to eat Jellyfish. Naive in the extreme.

Now, there was a lot of debate amongst the voices in my head about who this actually was. Could this Juvenile Herring Gull be Mac Daddy’s? If not, then Mac Daddy picked up a serious stalker. This junior gull tailed Mac Daddy everywhere, crying, whining, begging, and even pecking on Mac Daddy’s Red Spot. When a young gull craves its parent’s vomit, it pecks on the red spot the parent’s yellow beak. Now that I think about it, Mac Daddy’s beak looks pretty well worn and well pecked. And Mac Daddy looks overall pretty well vomited.

Perhaps Mac Daddy paid this kid to tail him in effort to appear more pathetic and thus assist with his begging. “Hey kid, if you help me out, I can promise you a huge pile of CheezIt (TM) and Peanut Butter Sandwich vomit after 5”. Only time will tell and I’m beyond curious to see if we’ll see Mac Junior (“Quarter Pounder”?) again in the coming days.

A few things are for sure: this was a super young gull, Mac Daddy was “caring” for it (in his own curmudgeonly way), and they displayed a full family-ial relationship.

While it may have looked like Mac Daddy was hogging it, he held this Spot Croaker for Junior so Junior could tear off little tids and bits.And watched over Junior gingerly and encouragingly while Junior inhaled the rest.And while it looked like Mac Daddy was stealing any crabs Junior stumbled upon…Mac Daddy was actually doing the hard work of busting them up so Junior could down them easily.

I’m beyond my limits of observation and Googling to explain all of this. Time will tell. Could this be Mac Daddy’s kid? Could Mac Daddy be helping out a poor orphaned Juvenile? Could all of this attention and recognition have convinced Mac Daddy that North Beach is a safe and pleasant place to teach this young gull the art of scoring CheezIts (TM)?

Could Mac Daddy be Mac Mommy? My attribution of gender to most of the creatures we see on Reading From The Northside is based purely on my fantasies of what seems feminine and masculine but, truth be told, sexing a Herring Gull is near impossible with my observational skills and personal willingness to “explore”. We’ll see how this all develops in the coming weeks.

Thanks for this beautiful site! My family and I are year rounders in Ship Bottom and obsess over the wildlife that’s all around us on the island! Here in Ship Bottom we have a huge population of bunnies, maybe in the fall ( or next spring? ) you can find some bunny families up in NB? Or maybe the red foxes in BL we haven’t seen any recent shots of them in a while…Anyway THANKS for these pics and commentary!